An operating system (OS) is a program that executes in computing devices, such as personal computers, smart phones, and video game consoles. The OS is the most important program of a computing device, having the responsibility for managing hardware resources and for providing common services used in the execution of application software. Without an operating system, a user cannot run an application program on their computing device, unless the application program is self booting. Examples of operating systems include the Microsoft Windows® operating systems (e.g., Windows Vista®, Windows Phone 7™, etc.) provided by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., Google Android™ provided by Google Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., Linux, which is an open source OS platform, iOS developed by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. for mobile devices, and Mac OS® X provided by Apple Inc. for personal computers.
Computing devices typically are manufactured and then shipped from the manufacturers with an operating system pre-installed. In this manner, users that purchase computing devices receive the computing devices in an essentially fully operational form. However, updates to operating systems are frequently issued to correct OS bugs, to add further functionality to the operating systems, etc. As such, operating systems that are provided pre-installed in computing devices are often out of date because they lack updates that were not applied to the OS versions maintained by the manufacturers. As such, after purchasing computing devices, users typically have to update the OS of their new device. Such an update is typically performed by the user by connecting a purchased computing device to a computer that runs a tool/utility configured to perform device updates. The tool/utility communicates with a server to determine whether an update to the OS exists, and if so, downloads the OS update to the purchased computing device.